Friday, October 7, 2016

"Playing live for Don O's program on KNON 89.3 at 7pm Texas time tonight (Friday). Gearing up for Josh Alan at Sons of Hermann Hall, Sat. Oct. 8th. Broadway star John Kuether will perform two numbers with me at the show on Saturday. Here's Lick of the Day #8."

Described as "a coloring book for adults who buy coloring books, and those who don't," the 130-page oversized, illustrated softcover has a retail price of $14.95 USD and is available for preview and purchase via Amazon here.

KNON-FM 89.3 presents a CD Release party for Josh Alan’s new album, Sixty Goddammit—rated number one on KNON’s Texas Blues Radio Living Blues Report."A CD so good, we play it even though we can’t say the name of it on the radio."

Now see Josh Alan perform the new album live. The Sixty, Goddammit CD Release Party will be Saturday, Oct 8th at the Sons of Hermann Hall.

The headlines in classic men's pulp adventure magazines sure could paint a picture ... and so could the masters of pulp art who illustrated them. The latest installment in the Men's Adventure Library shifts gears to focus exclusively on men's adventure magazine artwork in a new, oversized (8.5" x 11") format designed to show off these explosive pulp illustration masterworks to maximum effect.

Barbarians on Bikes rounds up three decades of vintage pulp magazine covers and interiors depicting rowdy motorcycle action and outlaw biker gang attacks, most unseen since their original publication. A unique archive of biker illustration art at its most savage, with history and context by editors Robert Deis (MensPulpMags.com) and Wyatt Doyle (Cryptozoology Anthology), and an afterword/reality check by crime novelist/top cop Paul Bishop. And the deluxe hardcover includes an additional 20 pages of belted and booted biker pulp art. Barbarians on Bikes is big, bad, and untamed. Can you handle the ride?

Barbarians on Bikes is available in two editions. The deluxe hardcover is designed for the collector, boasting superior paper and print quality, an alternate arrangement of images, plus those 20 big bonus pages packed with even more unforgettable artwork. For the merely curious, the trade softcover edition delivers the full-color punch of the hardcover at a lower cover price.

Barbarians on Bikes is a high-octane visual archive, the first of its kind...read it like you stole it!

Thursday, August 25, 2016

This weekend marks the first annual Chattanooga Readers and wRiters Festival, to be held this Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at City Hall. Stop by the New Texture table, where we'll have a bunch of great books for sale, including advance copies of the upcoming release from the Men's Adventure Library, Barbarians on Bikes. We'll also be selling Crypto koozies, featuring Cryptozoology Anthology's Ape-Man Monster of Tennessee!

It's going to be great day for readers in Chattanooga. For more details, visit the event's Facebook page, HERE.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Musician-composer Stanley J. Zappa, together with pianist and musical theorist Andrew Wedman have created The First Annual Untempered Festival of Dissonant Arts, an event celebrating sonic adventures and musical exploration.

One of the highlights of the festival is an appearance by legendary guitar genius Peter Walker, whose performance will blur the boundaries of raga, flamenco and folk. Walker, who was a fixture of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the '60s and studied under greats including Ravi Shankar, has recently come out of retirement to tour and release new recordings. His music is being discovered by a whole new generation.

The festival will also feature The Jooklo Duo, Virginia Genta and David Vanzan. Cosmic free jazz giants from Italy, they will perform along with Stanley Zappa as Jooklo Zappa. Together, their frenetic approach is propelled by unhinged dual saxophones and primal drumming, creating musical transcendence, chaos and cacophony.

Festival founders Zappa and Wedman will perform improvised sonorities unique to Wedman’s bass piano (a piano de-tuned one octave) in combination with Zappa's clarinet and saxophone. Their work rarely complies with principles of tonality dominant in western music. Their focus on so-called “untempered” and “dissonant” tones was the inspiration for the festival.

Wedman and Zappa hope that the Untempered Festival can be a part of a larger circuit. According to Zappa, “There are a number of BC music series that feature improvised and sonically adventuresome music. Casse-Tête in Prince George along with Skin and Bones in Kelowna get world class musicians to perform. I want them to come here, too, so that we can open up to more experiences of the truly new music these artists are creating.”

The First Annual Untempered Festival of Dissonant Arts will be held at the Shatford Centre on Saturday, June 18th. Performances begin at 7 p.m.

Italian giants of Free Jazz Virginia Genta and David Vanzan, together known as the Jooklo Duo, have combined forces with Okanagan single-reed quester Stanley J. Zappa to create Jooklo-Zappa, an arresting trio of like-minded musicians dedicated to dismantling tonality.

Through their mutual friendship with Kevin Reilly, proprietor of Relative Pitch Records and all-around friend of improvised music, the Jooklo Duo and Stanley J. Zappa, along with Steve Leffue and Jim Hobs, met at the JACK performance space in Brooklyn, NY for an initial performance.

Jeremy Stewart, director of Casse-Tête: A Festival of Experimental Music, (held in Prince George) responded enthusiastically to the performance, and booked the Jooklo Duo and Stanley Zappa as headliners for Casse-Tête. Jooklo-Zappa was born.

The music is improvised—no two shows will (or can) be alike. Listeners can expect repeated challenges to their expectations in the form of carefully and not-so -carefully crafted melodies, harmonies and rhythms, designed at that very moment in time.

Stanley J. Zappa's new album, Sing-Song Songs, is available from New Texture.

“If I can help somebody as I pass along... If I can cheer somebody with a word or song... If I can show somebody he's traveling wrong... Then my living shall not be in vain.”*

—frequent program closing

FOR YEARS, Reverend Raymond Branch of the Heavenly Rainbow Baptist Church in South Los Angeles spent Sundays after services traveling to local rest homes and hospitals. Together with his wife Jean, they’d sing and pray, offering comfort and fellowship as they visited as many forgotten members of the community as the day allowed. Feeling called to do more but unsure how, inspiration struck when Rev. Branch noticed the one thing each of the people they visited kept at their bedside: a radio.

And so, in 1971, he began leasing the 3 a.m. timeslot on Inglewood’s KTYM-AM each Sunday morning (after midnight, the station diminished their signal, and rates were cheaper), and The Rainbow Gospel Hour was born, with most installments opening with the dedication:

“This program is designed for the sick and shut-in—in the sanitariums, hospitals, and penal institutions. We want you to know that we love you! And we care for you.”

At first, the show was recorded live in the KTYM studio, where he was usually accompanied by Jean.

“She would be with me when I’d be (rehearsing) at the house, before we went to the studio. Then, when we were at the studio, she’d be right there singing.” When the late-night schedule began to take a toll, they switched from live to prerecorded programs, with Rev. Branch providing cassette tapes to the station.

A barber by trade—and for decades concurrent with his community service, a barber by profession—Rev. Branch endeavored to keep business separate from his ministry, and today he remains a man of modest needs. A place of refuge, not judgment or dogma, the Heavenly Rainbow has always handed out more than it’s taken in, and Rev. Branch has never sought tax-exempt status for himself or the church. Though the Rainbow Gospel Hour enjoyed occasional sponsorship by local businesses over its four-decade run, most of the show’s broadcasts were financed entirely by Rev. Branch.

He put the shows together working with what he had. Initially a guitarist, he’d plug in and play and sing into a dual cassette boom box’s built-in mic, sometimes joined by Jean (she can be heard accompanying her husband on “It’s No Secret What God Can Do” and “Milky White Way”), sometimes joined by guests and members of his small congregation (“the faithful few”). He’d piece each show together on cassette and submit it for broadcast. Then he’d reuse those cassettes, using the dual deck to cut in and out, sometimes abbreviating and lengthening performances by recording new verses onto the tape, patching in relevant announcements and prayer requests by taping over outdated ones, and dropping in performances from other tapes. No masters were preserved, and tapes might be reused this way again and again over the years, resulting in sonic irregularities, volume jumps, and bleed-through mutations that, over time, became part of the aural texture of the broadcasts. While some adjustments have been made for this release in order to provide a consistent listening experience, this disc provides an otherwise accurate presentation of the broadcast as it aired.

The program saw changes in Rev. Branch’s choice of instruments during its long history.

“I started off in 1971 at the studio with the guitar. Then when I contracted arthritis real bad in my fingers, I couldn’t play the guitar anymore. So I went and got me an Omnichord, and I played that. I was playing the guitar and the Omnichord for a while, but my fingers were going bad. It had to be in the ‘80s—82 or 84—that I started putting the guitar down.”

The Omnichord introduced a traditional church organ sound to his recordings, but around 1997, a neighbor expressed interest in learning to play it. Rev. Branch passed down his Omni, and replaced it with a QChord, a similar instrument that lends an ethereal character to his music. This disc includes music from each of those periods.

***

This broadcast is also notable for the inclusion of a trio of lively duets with Roland Payne. But the energy, spirit, and palpable joy evident in the performances stands in contrast to the two men’s poignant history: Payne was a childhood friend from the rough-and-tumble backwater of Bayou Black, Louisiana, where he and Rev. Branch made up half of a young gospel quartet, calling themselves Branch Brothers. “Roland,” he explains, “was just like my brother.”

“I fought for Roland. A lot of guys tried to fight Roland; he couldn’t fight good, physically. I was a fast fighter. Even when I wasn’t sure I could whip ’em, I’d whip ’em anyway! When somebody messed with him, he came to me. I took care of him. That’s just how close we was.

“Roland always wanted to be a preacher. He was raised by his grandfather; his grandfather was a minister. When he came to California, I had been here two or three years. I left Louisiana and came here in 1949. Roland came here about ’52 or ’53.

“He always went to other churches. I believe that Roland was thinking that I was trying to be a preacher because he was trying to be a preacher.

“He should have been a minister when I became a pastor, but he didn’t come and work with me. He had got to a place where he was doing sinful things. I’d call him out about it, and he’d get shook up. That’s why he and I weren’t as close as we should have been, later.

“After we went down the line,” Rev. Branch says today, “I misplaced Roland.”

“But I remember he came by one Sunday—I think we did that right in the church, those three songs. He was visiting, and I taped three songs and put them on the radio.”

***

The Rainbow Gospel Hour ceased broadcasting in 2014, when KTYM was sold and a format change was announced. Despite the program’s historic four-decade run, the broadcast ended without fanfare. Attendance at the Heavenly Rainbow has fallen off, as former congregants pass on or shift allegiances to bigger, glossier houses of worship that now dominate the landscape. But Rev. Branch’s commitment to his ministry remains undiminished, and he maintains daily hours at the church building while continuing to offer a musical service each Sunday, where all are made welcome.

“I feel like God can do anything. If a guy is rich in money, and you’re rich in believing, you’re just as rich as that guy. There’s richness on the Devil’s side, and there’s richness on God’s side. I prefer being poor and loving God to being rich and loving the Devil.”

Twice a widower at 85, times are tougher than ever for Rev. Branch. But it’s never an easy road for those who choose to sincerely heed the call to service, and Rev. Branch has known tough times since he was a child on Bayou Black.

“When they were fighting and cutting and shooting, I was sitting in the corner, looking in the sky, trying to find out where God was.”

* From the hymn, “If I Can Help Somebody” and quoted by Martin Luther King Jr., in his sermon “The Drum Major Instinct,” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in February 1968.

Some of these songs were rerecorded for Rev. Branch’s 2015 CD, I’ve Got Heaven on My Mind. For Rev. Branch’s thoughts on those songs, follow this link to read that album’s liner notes: http://bit.ly/RevB_Heaven

Friday, March 11, 2016

Our highly acclaimed Men's Adventure Library collection focused on tales of man's encounters in the wild with the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and other weird beasts, is now available as full-color, fully illustrated ebook!

Edited by Robert Deis of MensPulpMags.com, David Coleman (The Bigfoot Filmography) and Wyatt Doyle (Stop Requested), the book includes contributions from luminaries such as Sir Arthur C. Clarke, John Keel, and many others. Cryptozoology Anthology is packed with 13 biting tales of creatures notorious and obscure, and the limited hardcover includes bonus material exclusive to that edition, including an additional wild story rescued from obscurity. Don't leave civilization without it!ORDER THE EBOOK FROM AMAZON HERE!Cryptozoology Anthology is also available in paperbackand limited edition hardcover!

Monday, February 15, 2016

Preview over sixty action-packed pages from A Handful of Hell! This latest full-color release from the Men's Adventure Library collects the finest stories of conflict and adventure by Robert F. Dorr originally published in men's adventure pulps of the 1960s and '70s.

From Wyatt Doyle, the book's co-editor (with Robert Deis) and designer:

“Dorr communicates his characters' fears, their uncertainty, and the terrible losses fighting men suffer in deeply human terms, putting readers not only in the scene, in the moment, but inside these men's thoughts. His accounts of these heroes drive the point home time and time again that these are not warriors, gladiators, or super-humans. These are our brothers, our buddies; they are us. It's a powerful sentiment, and one that can't be expressed enough. Reading these stories today, they have lost none of their potency.”

Monday, February 1, 2016

Devil May Call, directed by Jason Cuadrado from a screenplay by Cuadrado and New Texture's Wyatt Doyle, makes its US television debut on Chiller this Saturday, February 6, at 9 pm ET. The film is part of their Don't Watch Alone series, which also includes Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers and Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate.

From Chiller's site:Chiller invites viewers to truly interact with the movie we're showing. While watching, follow along on our Facebook page (and if you haven't liked us, what are you waiting for?) or on Twitter. We'll be using #ScarySocial - and want you to as well! Throughout the night, we'll share lots of juicy extras about the movie, including Q&A's and live tweeting with the cast or crew, behind-the-scenes videos, quizzes and more. And, of course, we'll be providing commentary.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

“These stories were being read by men who’d been there, done that. I had to have the personalities and the details right. They wouldn’t tolerate having men like themselves overly glorified, or to have war made glamorous.”

Aviator, diplomat, and historian, Robert F. Dorr was uniquely qualified to write for men’s adventure magazines, bringing sweat-and-blood, nuts-and-bolts authenticity to his stories of risk, combat, and sacrifice. Best known today for his highly regarded historical works, Dorr’s stories for the men’s pulps also drew from jaw-dropping true accounts, as action-packed as any imagined by his hard-boiled peers.

In this tense, gritty collection, the master storyteller drops readers squarely into the action’s fiery crucible, both in the cockpit and on the front lines. Each story includes full-color reproductions of the explosive vintage art from the stories’ original publication by some of the greatest names in illustration.

A singular collection in the author’s vast bibliography, A Handful of Hell highlights the best of Robert F. Dorr’s vivid, gripping tales of aerial conflict, battlefield heroism and action—some fact, some fiction, all adrenaline-fueled, white-knuckle adventure.

“Robert F. Dorr sets the standard for writing about aviation and adventure.”

— Walter J. Boyne,

author and former director,

National Air and Space Museum

Robert F. Dorr is an author (since 1955), an Air Force veteran (1957-60) and a retired American diplomat (1964-89). His latest book is the novel Crime Scene: Fairfax County, and features characters introduced in his 2014 alternate-history novel, Hitler’s Time Machine. Author of more than 70 books on military and aviation history, Dorr has served as a columnist for Air Force Times and Aerospace America. Many of his early published writings were in men’s adventure magazines in the 1960s and 1970s.Bob and his wife Young Soon are the parents of two grown sons with families and live in Oakton, Virginia with their Labrador retriever, Autumn.

A Handful of Hell is available in a softcover trade edition and as a limited edition hardcover with over 40 pages of additional content. Purchase the softcover here and the limited edition hardcover here.

Monday, January 4, 2016

"One of the qualities I admire most in Wyatt Doyle’s work is his eye for the unexpected juxtapositions of detail among the seemingly mundane, juxtapositions of detail that provide a window of insight into life, into society, into truth. This quality is as strong in his fiction as it is in his photography."
—Bill Shute, Kendra Steiner Editions

A selection of Wyatt Doyle's photos is showcased as part of the Visual Art Spotlight series on Kendra Steiner Editions' site, here. Wyatt's photos have previously been featured on the covers of the KSE releases Dusk With Carol by Doug Draime and the CD Modern Architecture by FOSSILS.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Rev. Branch in a slightly different mode. This was my last visit with Rev. Branch before I left California in 2014. We'd retired to his office to chat and unwind after recording a day's worth of performances in the church when he broke into this almost spontaneously, while I raced to set up the camera. I'm glad I did. —WD

I WATCHED THEM EAT ME ALIVE

The Men's Adventure Library's I Watched Them Eat Me Alive collects pulse-pounding pulp fiction and outrageous illustration art of man vs. beast in vivid full color! Edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, it's available as a 106-page softcover for just $9.95, and in a deluxe, expanded 126-page hardcover edition for $24.95. The expanded hardcover includes work by pantheon men’s adventure artist Samson Pollen and a long-lost tale of bloodthirsty crustaceans by SFWA Grand Master Robert Silverberg! Get it here.

THE LAST COLORING BOOK

MAP OF THE MOON EP

Map of the Moon delivers a volatile mix of zero-gravity noise pop and moon rock. Blissed, hazy shoegaze transmissions from space, synth rock and direct hi-energy indie pop, with uptempo rock and roll coming through on re-entry. Get the EP here.

BARBARIANS ON BIKES

Barbarians on Bikes is a different kind of release from The Men's Adventure Library. Oversized and all artwork, this one-of-a-kind visual archive rounds up three decades of vintage pulp magazine art featuring rowdy motorcycle action and outlaw biker gangs, most unseen since their original publication. With history and context by editors Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, plus an afterword by crime novelist Paul Bishop. The deluxe hardcover edition includes an additional 20 pages of biker pulp art. Barbarians on Bikes is big, bad, and untamed. Can you handle the ride?Buy it here.

SIXTY, GODDAMMIT

Josh Alan’s first album in 15 years. Can you dig it? Atomic acoustic blues-funk-rock. Sixty, Goddammit? Ya damn right.

A HANDFUL OF HELL

New from the Men's Adventure Library, editors Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle present A Handful of Hell by Robert F. Dorr.

Aviator, diplomat, and historian, Dorr was uniquely qualified to write for men’s adventure magazines, bringing sweat-and-blood, nuts-and-bolts authenticity to his stories of risk, combat, and sacrifice. Best known today for his highly regarded historical works, Dorr’s stories for the men’s pulps also drew from jaw-dropping true accounts, as action-packed as any imagined by his hard-boiled peers.

DOLLAR HALLOWEEN

Photographs by Wyatt Doyle, author of Stop Requested.

Every year, faces of death crowd the aisles of dollar stores: Skeletons, ghouls, and rubber body parts, all manufactured cheaply overseas and designed and destined for the homes of the working poor of Los Angeles and elsewhere. The result of several years' work for photographer Doyle, Dollar Halloween is a catalog of the annual exhibition.

I'VE GOT HEAVEN ON MY MIND

You don't have to have faith to love Reverend Raymond Branch! I've Got Heaven on My Mind features twelve contemplative, inspirational recordings, including a cover of the Velvet Underground's "Jesus," composed by Lou Reed for the band's eponymous 1967 LP.

I've Got Heaven on My Mind is recorded and mixed by Todd Burke, and is produced by Wyatt Doyle and Mike McGonigal. All sales go directly to Rev. Branch's service efforts in the community.

TEACHER TALES

For 40 years, Mr. Kessler has taught English in the Philadelphia school system the way he knows best: Keeping his head down, not making waves, and counting down the minutes before he's home enjoying a few generously poured martinis. But a series of new acquaintances and bad decisions in his final year before retirement brings his world crashing down around him--tragically and hilariously.

Teacher Tales, the savagely funny debut from novelist Richard Adelman, is available now. Buy it here.

CRYPTOZOOLOGY ANTHOLOGY

From the Men's Adventure Library, CRYPTOZOOLOGY ANTHOLOGY tears into 13 long-lost tales of fist-to-claw encounters with Bigfoot, sea monsters, the Yeti, and cryptids both notorious and obscure. With contributions from luminaries like Sir Arthur C. Clarke and John Keel, plus full-color reproductions of pulp artwork that accompanied the stories' original publication in classic men's adventure magazines.

Our mothership, NewTexture.com, is currently down for design improvements and redirects here. Pending the main site's relaunch, some NewTexture.com content linked from this blog will be temporarily unavailable.